Protective garments are worn to protect a wearer from various hazards, including fine particles, solvents, and aggressive liquids and/or to protect a workplace, such as a clean room, from being contaminated by the person wearing the garment. Protective garments may be disposable to eliminate the need for their careful handling and expensive laundering. Disposable protective garments generally have a short service life but have the benefit of being discardable when the service life has expired. Examples of disposable protective garments are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,272,851, 4,683,593, and 5,509,142.
The protection offered by a disposable protective garment is determined to a large extent by the barrier material(s) from which the garment is formed. Even when appropriate barrier materials are used, however, hazardous dusts and vapours can sometimes leak into a garment at various locations, including seams, wrist and ankle openings, and zip closures. For this reason, the number of potential leakage points is preferably kept to a minimum, and those locations are constructed to minimize leakage as best possible. Garment cost is also an important consideration when fashioning a disposable protective garment. Costs should also be held to a minimum--but consistent with the degree of protection required--to discourage continued garment use after the service life has expired.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,190,010, 4,593,418, and 4,683,593 describe methods of constructing seams in protective garments to reduce leakage. In the case of openings at the wrists and ankles, it is known to gather the garment using a sewn-in elastomeric material so that the garment fits more closely to the wearer's limbs at those locations. Leakage nevertheless remains a problem in those areas because of the stitching, and wearers therefore commonly apply tape there to cover the stitch holes and to further seal the garment to their bodies or to their gloves and boots. To protect zip closures, cover flaps typically are used to secure the garment on one side of the closure and, when the garment is in use, is located over the zipper and secured along the other side by an adhesive tape.